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The synopsis of Anyone Home

Anyone Home is a pyschological thriller based in Enfield, London and follows the life of a normal teenage girl coming home from school. Once at home, she heads into the kitchen believing she is home alone however hears a thud and decides to investigate. As she wanders around her house, checking the rooms for a burglar, she finds her mother unexpectantly unpacking her suitcase in her bedroom. The teenage girl later finds out that her mother came home early from a work trip abroad and helps her mother to unpack. However, what the two ladies do not expect, is that there actually is someone in their house and he is standing behind them.

We were inspired by Shutter Island and liked the plot of the film so much that we tried to include a similar plot to our film opening. However, we changed many aspects of the film to create originiality for example, making the "Man In House" (the killer) the brother of the teenage girl so that one of the major issues in Anyone Home is family conflict. This way, the audience may be able to relate to certain realistic issues within the film opening.

evaluation question 3

This is my question 3 of my evaluation.


 In this post, I have chosen three different media institutions that I think are suitable for distributing Anyone Home. They are; Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures and Working Title.

 I chose Universal Pictures because it is a very successful production and distribution company and is also one of the six major movie studios. This allows audiences from previous Universal Pictures' films to be interested in Anyone Home as they have the same distribution company. 

Secondly, Columbia Pictures was on my choice of disbribution companies as it is a member of the Big Six, and will again, attract a wider audience.


However, my ideal distribution company would be Working Title as it is British based and Anyone Home would require British actors and locations set in London.

Evaluation question 2

This is my question 2 of my evaluation.


In this question, I examine the social groups represented in Anyone Home.

The first representation is a teenage girl and we used the stereotype of teenagers being naive and curious and used this vulnerability in our film opening. By doing this, we created a realistic setting and a sense of the unexpected for our audience. We showed this through our close up and medium shots which reflected the fear and isolation our character felt.


The setting of our film opening is in a home which again, creates a very realistic environment. We also ensured that the mise-en-scene provided a sense of reality through everyday clothing and make-up and domestic locations.


Another social group is a family in which we included a mother and daughter. If this film opening became a feature length film, we would also reveal that the "Man In House" is the brother of the protagonist and a father would also appear, creating a nuclear family. This is ironic as nuclear families are becoming less popular in today's society and at the beginning of the film, it is clear that the family shown is not a nuclear family.


Most films present a male protagonist and the media is more dominated by males than by females, so we decided that our film opening would feature more females than males, to go against the norm of a male protagonist. However, this does not mean that males cannot watch Anyone Home as there will be a range of characters of both genders and no references to feminism.

Evaluation question 1

This is my question 1 for my evaluation.




In this video I examine the ways Anyone Home uses, develops or challenges the forms and conventions of real media products.

Anyone Home is a psychological thriller and this includes mystery and action cooperated into one thriller. This is what my group and I attempted to achieve and accroding to our audience feedback, we succeed. To do this, we edited the lighting, colours and contrast of the clips to create fear and suspense.

The sound used in Anyone Home reflects the tension in Anyone Home and we overlapped many different sounds to achieve a realistic sound to reflect a heartbeat.

We researched many successful pyschological thrillers such as Shutter Island and TV series Luther and found out that many of the characters shown in the films were family members. We ensured that Anyone Home would reveal the characters in a family too.

Evaluation question 4 + 5

This is my evaluation, question 4 and five.





Our film opening would have an age certificate rating of 15 as it would include strong language and violence however our film opening does not and therefore anyone of any age can watch it. We decided to make our film a 15 rating so that it could include the conventions of most pyschological thrillers.

I conducted a questionnaire and asked school friends and teachers their favourite movie genres and what they wanted in a film. With this data, my group and I found out that most people enjoy watching thrillers and so we decided that a psychological thriller would be best for us.

We also included elements in which the audience would be attracted, for example, a well known song called Girls by the 1975 and also an interrogative for a title as this is different to many other film titles.

The questionnaire mentioned in the evaluation is one that I have already posted but will post again now.

Evaluation question 7

This is my question 7 of my evaluation.




My group and I have made many improvments since our prelimary task as we are now more comfortable with working iMovie and many different other technologies used to create Anyone Home. Also, our knowledge of Macs has widened which allows us to use more mature and appropriate changes and decisions.

Firstly, our prelim included only five different angle shots that were basic and portrayed no meaning. However, our film opening included a range of shots that were thought about in advanced. They also focused on the characters and objects used whereas our prelimary task included all three characters in most shots.

The text used in our opening is a commonly used text in thrillers according to a website we used whilst researching. We tried it out and agreed that Trajan pro was appropriate for Anyone Home and so we decided to keep it.

The colouring of the clips also showed that our editing skills have improved since our prelimary task and therefore produces a more realistic and suspense vibe to Anyone Home, which we wanted to achieve.

Our sound is what took up most of our time whilst editing as we soon realised it was very difficult. We found appropriate sound and music from the LGFL Audio Site and overlapped many different sound clips over each other to create the perfect tension sound effects. In our prelim, we did not use any sound except for the enhancing the footsteps and changing the voices of the characters to create humour.

Evaluation question 6

This is my question 6 of my evaluation.




As a group and individually, we have learnt a great deal about technologies from the process of constructing our film opening. We used cameras and microphones that at first were difficult to use but gradually, we became more and more comfortable with using. The camera used was the Panasonic HDC SD80. We also used a Kodak waterproof camera to film our favourite scene.

Editing our film was also very difficult to us as we had no experience with Macs or with iMovie before however, we watched many videos on YouTube that explained the basics of iMovie and taught our selves how to edit our clips.

We also used a microphone and an iPhone 4s to record the sound used in our film opening.

I feel much more comfortable with using technology and Macs after filming and editing Anyone Home.

Showcase

Today was the showcase of our film openings and A2's music videos. The feedback we recieved was really positive and we are very pleased with our two minute opening. The audience reacted well; they were scared even though we warned them about the pair of boots in the spare room and the doorway in the last scene. I think if we were to make this into a feature length film, we would gain the same amount of suspense and fear that we hoped for. This has made me very excited for A2.

Finished film vlog!

We made a vlog explaining the last finishing touches which were sound, font and dialogue. Now that we have finally finished our two minute opening film, we are pleased and proud of our work. We worked really hard in order to achieve suspense and fear in our opening as done by our inspirations Shutter Island and Luther. We are now working on our evaluations which will be done individually and will be uploaded soon.

Finally finished!!

We have finally finished our film opening and we have decided to leave it now so that we don't make any more changes.



 Now all we have to do is our evaluation. I have already planned out the topics I will talk about in my evaluation and all I need to do is film myself and edit the clips and pictures on top. I think my group and I will be doing this together as it will allow an in sight to all our perspectives and specific jobs we had in the group. For example, as Charlotte fimiling, Nadia directing, me acting and all of us editing.

Some changes..

After recieving audience feedback, we changed a few things in our two minute opening. Firstly, we took away the question mark from the film name because we realised that most film names have no question marks.

We also took away the background music when I am walking through the house up until I get out of the first bedroom and then the tension music begins.

We also filmed our production company which has the theme of a ransom letter, fitting in the genre of our film. We cut out letters from newspapers to form the words Thud Productions and stuck them on a coloured board we found in the art room for a nicer background. Each word pops up with each beat of the music we found on LGFL Audio Site. We chose this song because it is catchy and although is does not really suit our genre, this does not really matter because production companies produce different genres of films and if we were a real production company, then we would too.

Film rating

As a group we have decided to rate our film 15 because it will eventually include strong violence and language and physcological elements if we were to continue filming.

At first we wanted to make it a 12A because we wanted our film to be a thriller so it would not even be that scary but after some thought, we developed on our idea. We have changed the genre of our film to horror and developed the outcome of the film and what would happen if we were able to make a feature length movie.

Our film would include violence and strong language and would not be suitable for persons under 12 years old. However we would not include sexual activity so a certificate of 18 would not be required.

Script

Script for the mum and me:

 M: Oh, I didn't hear you come in.
 L: Mum! What are you doing here?! I thought you weren't back till tomorrow?
 M: What? No. Didn't you get my text? My meeting got cancelled. Now come and help me unpack.

 L: How was your trip?

Vlog

I made a vlog and spoke about everything we need to do still and what we did on Thursday evening.

Our film so far...

This is our film opening so far. All we need to do now is add a thud, opening titles and fix the music/dialogue towards the end. On Thursday, we reshot some of the shots and added new ideas that we thought would improve our film opening.

Font

We Googled most commonly used fonts for horror films and picked our favourite font for the opening titles of our two minute opening film.

Vlog

My group and I have decided to re-shoot a few scenes because we found some mistakes that we wanted to change. We made a list of things we want to change but thought we'd make a vlog too.




Some of these changes are:

Tesco scene

taking off bag only and keys
walking into kitchen quicker
looking up at light
REDO THUD
walking into hallway
hand on handle
charlotte bro room black coat on closet door and boot sticking out

Sound

We have chosen two sounds to over lap each other for the suspense section of the film opening.

Exam questions

Revision;

1) media ownership:  piracy, the dominance of Hollywood over the industry and the destruction of the UK Film Council.

http://www.slideshare.net/robertclackmedia/issues-raised-by-media-ownership

2) cross media convergence and synergy.

http://prezi.com/nc_eodbmelmk/the-importance-of-cross-media-convergence-and-synergy-in-production-distribution-and-marketing/

6) targeting national and international audiences

http://prezi.com/iojdivfuhic2/the-issues-raised-in-the-targeting-of-national-and-local-audiences-by-international-and-global-institutions/

Overall:

http://www.slideshare.net/sandraoddy2/the-main-question-areas-for-the-institution-and-audiences-exam

and

http://www.slideshare.net/ecclestona/revision-2-4440199